starroute said...
Jeff raises one crucial issue -- but I see an even deeper issue behind that.
The first issue is one of epistomology -- what can we know and how do we know it? When I was growing up, Western culture was still clinging to the remains of 17th century empiricism -- the idea that a newborn baby is a blank slate and all we can know is what we ourselves have experienced or learned.
However, that was already changing. By the time I studied linguistics in college in the 60's, the hot new idea was that perhaps certain kinds of knowledge (like the rules of grammar) might be hard-wired into the brain.
By the end of the 60's, I was starting to run into the further suggestion that the human mind was actually able to tap into something outside itself. That the quantum field, or the Akashic Records, or the "Universal Tablet" of the Rumi quote on Jeff's front page is a great repository of all the information in the universe, which we can access to the extent of our understanding and our necessity.
However, being the good modern Westerners that we are, we still tend to see this repository as a passive substance, like a computer hard drive, that we can draw upon and even manipulate at will.
But what if it isn't? What if it has a will and purpose of its own?
At this point, I'm going to quote a few paragraphs from Martin Bernal's "Black Athena," which I've been re-reading lately. They have to do with a crucial philosophical turning in the development of modern science -- the choice of "passive" matter over "active" matter -- and its political implications, and they raise a number of interesting issues:
By the 1680s a new, equally radical intellectual force had emerged in England from the Hermetic and Rosicrucian traditions. The new movement argued for a twofold philosophy, for transcendence by the elite of the religious squabbles of the masses. The masses should be given toleration to practise their particular superstition, but political and intellectual power should be firmly in the hands of the enlightened few.
This general attitude was perfectly compatible with 18th-century English society. The Radical Enlightenment, however, contained thinkers like John Toland, who not only drew from the Rosicrucian and Masonic traditions the notion of a prisca theologia, but also read Bruno. Toland had absorbed many of Bruno's cosmological Hermetic and Egyptian ideas of animate matter and a world spirit, ideas which lead to pantheism or even atheism. Long before this Newton himself had hesitated, in private, on the question of the activity or passivity of matter, but Newtonianism was not merely scientific. It had a consequent political and theological doctrine which depended on the passivity of matter, with motion coming only from outside. Otherwise, theologically, the universe would need no crdeator or 'Grand Architect', let alone a 'clock-minder'; while politically, England would need no king -- Toland was fully aware of the republican implications of his ideas.
John Toland was a central figure in the establishment ofc the legends, rituals and theology of speculative Masonry, much of which was standardized and canonized by the fusion of various Masonic and Rosicrucian groups in 1717. By that time, however, the movement had been taken over by respectable Newtonians. Even bold figures like Newton's deputy and successor at Cambridge, William Whiston, who unlike his mentor openly proclaimed his Arianism -- disbelief in the divinity of Christ -- 'despised and actively combated' Toland and his ideas.
These paragraphs are not as clear as I'd like -- largely because they contain too many ideas tangled up in a small space. But the points I take from them are these:
1) As radical new scientific and philosophical ideas advanced in the 17th century, the elite in general tended to argue that they could handle them, but that the masses should be kept ignorant and encouraged to adhere to their traditional superstitions. (This is, quite explicitly, still the position of the Straussians, and may explain a lot about the power of fundamentalism in this country today.)
2) Beyond that general elitism, there was an ongoing dispute between the Newtonian position of passive matter -- which justified both belief in a God to keep things running and, by analogy, in a powerful monarch -- and Toland's position of active matter, which leads to far more pantheistic, democratic, and open source concepts of the universe and of society.
3) The debate between active and passive matter may have been confined to the elite at the time. It's not clear from the quote whether Toland thought the masses could be trusted with his ideas or not. But either way, the concept of active matter must ultimately be subversive of all forms of superimposed power and external control.
4) This dispute played a central role in the establishment of modern Freemasonry in the early 1700's, with the Newtonians ultimately coming out on top but with traces of more radical ideas remaining around the edges.
Now, if you're still with me, what I make of all this is that the occult elite with which this board is so often concerned are the heirs of the winners in that long-ago contention. They endorse ideas out of the "Hermetic and Rosicrucian traditions" -- though they would never admit that to the superstitious masses. But their interpretation of those ideas is one in which the universe, higher reality, and their fellow humans are all no more than passive matter, for them to use, manipulate, and exploit as they choose.
In contrast, if matter really is active and engaged in seeking its own destiny, then the occult elite is not merely philosophically mistaken but is actively evil -- in that they attempt to treat the 'divine' as so many concrete blocks and plaster it into structures of their own devising. In the long run, this can only come back to bite them on the ass.
But it still leaves the rest of us with one overriding question: If matter is active, if the universe has a soul and a direction, then what is to be our relationship to it? How do we conceive of it? What do we see reflected when we look out into the cosmic mirror? And (most important) what do we make of the mystery of our own nature?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0822327171/sr=8-2/qid=1143723757/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-7168898-3783864?%5Fencoding=UTF8
22 of 33 people found the following review helpful: Great historiography, lots of inspiration for further study, June 15, 2003
Reviewer:AK van Deelen "Alex K. van Deelen"
(The Hague, The Netherlands) - See all my reviews
Black Athena
There are a lot of hysterical reviews on this forum, by people who clearly have
not read, let alone understood the book, Black Athena.
This book is not about whether the Ancient Egyptians were Black, or whether
Greek civilization as it exists today and became known to the Romans was a
wholesale copy of Egyptian civilization, as it obviously wasn't.
So, what is Black Athena about?
This book carefully sets out Martin Bernal's hypothesis, that ancient history
can be seen as having been molded into specific narratives, depending on
the age when that narrative was created and found it's uses.
He defines three different Models or narratives, namely the Ancient Model,
The Aryan Model, and his own Revised Ancient Model. He includes some
suggested timelines, but basically, the Ancient Model of Greeks like
Herodotus, suggested that in 15th century BC, Egyptians and
Phoenicians had set up colonies in Greece and the Aegean, creating Greek
civilization. The Aryan Model suggests that civilization started with the
indigenous creation of a civilization in Greece, and that there were
Nordic invasions of Indo-European speakers who mixed in with
the non-Indo-European speaking indigenous population
Bernal's Revised Ancient Model places the Egyptian and Phoenician
invasions in the 21st-19th century, pushes back the introduction of the
alphabet to the 17th century (from the 9th century), but maintains
that there were Nordic invasions and that the indigenous population
spoke a related Indo-Hittite language.
All ten chapters in this book are documented to a different period and
the changing perspectives and emphasis that is put on a particular origin
of history or culture (from the Ancient Model In Antiquity (I), through
this model's transmission during the dark ages and the renaissance (II),
The Triumph of Egypt in the 17th and 18th Centuries (III) and
the beginning Hostilities To Egypt In The 18th Century (IV) (long _before_
Champollion's decypherment of Egyptian in the first quarter of the19th century).
These hostilities had no small part of their origins in the existing race based slavery,
colonialism and the challenges from within Europe to the transatlantic slave trade
as a catalist of the need for a defense of the first two institutions.
Chapters V through IX deal with the Romantic Linguistics (V) the discovery of
Sanskrit as a related, Indo-European language and the rise of the Indian-Aryan model.
Hellenomania (VI) deals with the rise of Greece as a fount of European
civilization and ideals, under the German school of von Humboldt and Wolf.
Hellenomania 2 (VII) deals with the takeup of this school of thought in England
and the growing pre-eminence of the Aryan model in the middle of the 19th century.
The Rise And Fall Of The Phoenicians (VIII) deals with the recognitions of
the Phoenicians and the influence of antisemitism, as does chapter (IX).
The book concludes with The Post-War Situation (X) and discussion
of the influences of Gordon and Astour and their reclaming of the legacy
of the Phoenicians.
In the end we have to ask: is it really so difficult to believe that Ancient Egypt
at the height of it's power, it's age of expansion, created small Egyptian colonies
in the Peleponnese and around the Aegean (20th century BC), that these colonies
helped to transfer some of it's culture and civilization, and that the Greeks had myths
that said so? No linguist today disputes the Phoenician origin of the Greek alphabet.
A small step pyramid has been found in Thebes, Greece. Most ancient Greek
philosophers paid homage to Ancient Egypt and studied there, in the 5th century.
A classic book and a must read for anyone interested in the topic, especially
of Aegean relations and the history of history itself.
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